


Unsettled Soil

by simplyprologue



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: Angst, Drug Use, F/M, Post - s02e05, Post - s02e06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-11
Updated: 2014-10-11
Packaged: 2018-02-20 19:19:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2439893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyprologue/pseuds/simplyprologue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two weeks after his father dies and a week after dumping Nina in the ACN Morning green room, Mac nurses Will through a bad high.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unsettled Soil

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** Originally written for Emily, way back yonder. Originally from my tumblr.

He called an hour ago. In the week since he broke up with Nina he’s called every night, sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes for hours. He called an hour ago, and now they’re on her couch while he rides out a bad high.

_Please come get me._

What possessed him mix oxy with weed and chase it with whiskeyin hisoffice…Mac very firmly believes is directly tied to what possessed him to go on ACN morning a week ago. He made it another week. She sure he’s skipping therapy appointments, burying his trauma into anything that looks like it can hold it — his relationship with Nina, the show, themorningshow, drugs, alcohol. Except that getting wasted when you’re trying to bury the fact that your father beat you and your mother (that one she got on Day 5 after the break-up, in a quiet voice that sounded like a flower shattering, soft petals on the floor) only washes away unsettled soil and makes you face it the stark unrealities of a prescription high.

So she got in a cab, and he leaned on her shoulder the cab ride back to her place, shaking, his face buried into her coat.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, shivering, turning his head so he no longer has a mouthful of the pillow on her lap. “God, I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry.”

She wonders how much of this he’ll remember in the morning, when he wakes up on her couch, covered in her blanket, with her coffeemaker’s automatic grinder going off at 6 AM, two and a half hours before he ever bothers getting up. He left her the voicemail (which, considering it was Nina she heard it from, Mac is seriously starting to believe she didn’t hear what was actually in it) when he was this high. But that wasn’t… this.

“You are so making this up to me,” she insists, keeping her voice quiet, pushing a flop of hair back off his forehead and blotting sweat with a damp washcloth. “You’re letting me run with South Sudan for the entire B-Block on Monday.”

He laughs, before moaning and curling his knees up towards his chest.

She softens her voice. “If you’re going to throw up, be decent enough to warn me so I can get a bucket.”

“Copy,” he moans, squeezing his eyes shut.

And then even softer, “I swear to god, Billy. If you do this to me again, if we go down the same path as last August… just call me _before_ you do this next time, please?”

“Last time I was this high,” he mumbles, looking up at her with hazy eyes. “I left you the voicemail.”

“You’re not gonna tell me what’s in it,” she orders.

“It’s kinda better than what’s goin’ on in my head right now,” he answers. “I—um, Mac, I—I swear, I’m not just telling you this because I’m high—”

MacKenzie sighs, leaning her head back on her couch, staring at her ceiling. The air comes on and his voice, low and strained, mixes with the hissing of the vents.

“Shut it, Will.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
